With billions of web pages online, you could spend a lifetime surfing the web. So where do you start?

This tutorial takes a look at how to find information online using search engines. Most of our examples will focus on the BigPond Home search engine, but the same method is used regardless of which search engine you use. 

We will also talk in relation to the browser called Internet Explorer.  There are different browsers so you will follow the same method regardless of which browser you use.

If you're new to the internet, you may not be familiar with some of the language. Don't despair! Keep a copy of this email so that you can come back to it when you need to refer to it.

You can visit any of the websites by clicking on their names - your web browser will automatically connect to and display the web site. Make sure you are connected to the internet first.

Or, you can manually enter the web site by typing the web address in Internet Explorer's address bar. You can leave out the "http://" part of the address if you do it this way.


A bit about search engines

A search engine searches the web for topics that you ask it to by typing words or phrases into a text box. There are hundreds of similar search services and search engines available online but there are probably less than 10 major ones that most people use.  You may of heard of some of them (eg. Google and Yahoo). 

As well as the global search engines, there are also search engines that focus on specific areas or topics such as shopping, travel etc.

Each search engine works slightly differently so you should learn the basic settings of the one(s) that you choose to use. There is a list of recommended search engines at the end of this tutorial and most of them offer online tutorials or help pages to help you get the best results from your search. 

Regardless of the search engine you use, they all tend to look similar because they more or less do the same job. Each one has a text box, where you type your search query and a button or icon that you click on to start the search process.

At the heart of every major search engine is a web robot or spider. This is a computer program designed to methodically search the internet to find new material that has not yet been recorded in the search engine's database.

Each time the web robot finds a new web site or resource, it scans the site contents for key words. The search engine's database is then updated with the site's name and internet address, together with the appropriate key words obtained by the web robot.

Despite the size of individual search engine databases, there is still the possibility that if you perform a search for a certain topic or keyword, you might not find any matches because the search engine has not yet indexed the relevant web sites.

So, if you can't find what you are looking for using the search engine you chose, you should at least try one other major search engine.

Tips and Tricks

1.search assistant.

The quickest way to start searching the web is to use Internet Explorer's search assistant.

It is an icon on Internet Explorer's standard toolbar and looks like a magnifying glass (sits just to the right of the 'Home' button). Click on this icon and a small "pane" on the left side of the web browser window will appear.

The search assistant is pre-configured for a variety of searches, including searching for web pages, locating businesses, looking up someone's email address etc.

The "find a webpage" search option is selected by default, so you don't need to alter any settings. All you need to do is click your mouse pointer in the textbox that appears directly beneath the words "find a webpage containing:" and type one or more relevant search terms. Then click on the "search" button to begin the search.

We look at how to choose which search terms to use a little later.

When you click the search button, the search assistant will submit your search query to one of several search engines that it uses.

Behind the scenes, the search assistant will look through its massive database of websites. It will then pick the best matches, and rank them according to how closely they match your query. The resulting matches are then displayed within the search assistant pane. The entire process takes only a few seconds.

The results will include the name of each matching website. In some cases, the results may also include a brief summary of the contents of the website.

To view a website listed in the search results, just click on its name. Internet Explorer will bring up the website you chose in the main portion of the web browser window.  The search assistant is still active, so if the website is not what you were looking for, just click on another matched website.

If the search engine finds a large number of matching websites, the results will contain the first 20 or so matches. Use the scroll-bar on the right-hand side of the search assistant pane to scroll through the list of matched sites. To see the next set of matching websites, click on the "next" link at the bottom of the results.

When you have finished with the search assistant, you can close it by clicking on the search toolbar button again.


2. Keyword search - be as specific as possible.

There are literally billions of records on the internet so the words you choose when you search can make a huge difference to the results you get. To get the best results from your search, start with an obvious key word but add extra words to better describe what you are looking for. For example, if you want to book accommodation in a luxury hotel in Brisbane, instead of typing "Brisbane" you could start with "luxury hotel accommodation Brisbane".

3. Exact phrase

Most of the major search engines will match all of the words you put in the search box. So if you enter the words rainwater tanks, the search engine will look for matches for the word rainwater OR the word tanks, and not limit itself to websites that contain both words.

To improve your search, use double quotation marks around your phrase or words, ie "rainwater tanks". This tells the search engine to find only those websites that contain the exact phrase "rainwater tanks" with the words in the same order.

4. Sentence case.

Generally, search engines are case sensitive. If you enter your search in all lower case, it will assume that you don't mind whether the matches are in upper or lower case. So if you type the word "apple", matches will be made for Apple, apple and APPLE.

Typing capitals, however, will usually only return an exact match. 

5. Using (+) and (-) signs in your search.

Use the (+) and (-) signs to force certain words to be either included or excluded from your search.

You can use a (+) sign when there is a word that is essential to include.  For example, if you want to look up information about world war II, you might enter the words world war +II.  Be sure to leave a space before the +sign. There is no space between the (+) sign and the word that follows it.

Likewise, you can use a (-) sign in front of a word that you definitely want left out of your search. So, if you want to research pianos, but you aren't interested in acoustic pianos, you could enter the words piano -acoustic. Make sure you leave a space before the negative sign but do not leave a space between the minus sign and the word that follows it.

You can use a combination of the plus and minus signs and words within the quotation marks to give the search engine more explicit instructions as to which sites it should match and those sites it should exclude.

For example, if you are looking for Web sites about the band, Midnight Oil, but don't want just any references to "midnight oil", you might try:

midnight +oil -politics  or    "midnight oil" +Garrett


Learning more about search engines

Remember, each search engine has it's own specific rules and so they do differ from each other in the way they search. Most offer online tutorials or help pages to help you get the best results from your search. Be sure to check each search engine you use to see if it offers help for new users.

For more searching tips-n-tricks, and to learn more about how search engines work in general, try some of these sites:

Search Engine Watch - http://www.searchenginewatch.com
Search Engine Showdown - http://searchengineshowdown.com
WebSearch - http://websearch.about.com/
SearchIQ - http://www.zdnet.com/searchiq/


Below are some popular web search engines you can try:

Sensis- http://www.sensis.com.au/
Lycos - http://www.lycos.com
Yahoo! - http://www.yahoo.com.au
Alta Vista - http://www.altavista.com
Excite - http://www.excite.com
Google - http://www.google.com
Fast Search - http://www.alltheweb.com
Ask Jeeves - http://www.ask.com


Printing this tutorial

To print a copy of this tutorial, click on the file pull-down menu and select print.

Alternatively, you can use the Ctrl-P shortcut (Windows) or the Apple-P shortcut (Mac) (press the Ctrl or Apple button on your keyboard and, while holding it down, press the P key).

A print dialog box will be displayed. Follow the onscreen prompts to print the document.